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Sunday, August 22, 2010

Barney Frank lauded, flacked and defended the two institutions many people feel were major factors in the collapse of the mortgage market and, through them, the housing and construction industries.

Barney Frank

Fannie and Freddie, the two government entities which had been producing most of the high-risk paper, bundling it and selling it to other mortgage banks. Eventually, the market turned toxic with bad mortgages and the actual and threatened failures of many of the banking institutions that had gambled on these billions of dollars of worthless bundled mortgages.

Even in the face of the obvious disaster that befell us in 2008, just in time to panic an already nervous public into thinking the sky was falling, Barney Frank was steadfast in his defense of the two low-income mortgage giants.

I was listening to Larry Kudlow’s radio audience filet him for appearing to praise Barney Frank for his abrupt turn around about Fannie and Freddie saying, “they should be abolished”. Larry seems to think that Barney had an epiphany regarding Fannie and Freddie and the entire low-income loan business, among other revelations. He thinks Frank is a serious politician and, as he puts it, “a thinker”. Ok, Larry, if you say so, but I’m equally certain that whatever comes of all that furious thinking does not, in general, bode well for the American people.

I’m wondering if Mr Frank may be looking for political cover in the impending storm coming up in November. In fairness to Larry Kudlow, he disagrees with just about everything Frank says. I’ve made no secret of my dislike for Barney Frank and what he helped perpetrate. For him to ride out the back end of this, as the redeemed advocate for free market solutions, would be disingenuous at best.
He hasn’t changed his spots Larry… just his tune.